Shetland’s Wool Season kicks off

So we’re a month into the wool season, which officially started in June. However, bad weather has meant that it’s only just starting to kick off – until now our crofters and farmers haven’t been able to get their sheep clipped because of wet, cold, windy days. This isn’t terribly unusual, because most folk do only start clipping in July (starting with gimmers – year old lambs – which are usually nearer the house and aren’t busy feeding lambs).

Despite the slow start to the season, we put over 2o tonnes of wool (known at J&S as ‘Load 1’) off to the scourers on Friday afternoon. We’ll then spin this wool into our J&S yarns, or sell it on directly to our partners like Vi-Spring and The Real Shetland Company. This is the earliest that Load 1 has ever gone out in at least the last five years (we’ll need to go and dig in our archived black books to see further back). We’re hoping this means that there are more sheep around, and therefore more wool.

It will be towards the end of the year, when the season is well and truly over and Load 12 (making the total around 240 tonnes) has left us, that we’ll know more about exactly how much wool we’ve taken in. Fingers crossed. Until then, thanks to you all for your continued support of Real Shetland Wool.

Image: Bales of Real Shetland Wool piled to the beams of our wool store on Friday afternoon. Each bale shows weights, grades and identity numbers for traceability of each supplier’s clip.